Perspectives on Web Design

So I owe 2 posts for 2 classes! I am not waning in enthusiasm – just been busy.

Last weeks lecture was titled “perspectives on web design”. Pat talks about the different perspectives with which people will approach the web design project, and gives us some good sources of information.

The key advice that I am clinging onto from the notes is There's no point in having a nice design with easy navigation, if the content is unoriginal, uninteresting or just absent. You need to provide original and interesting content.

Another point also hit a chord – it was about asking for feedback. I think this is a key feature often missed, and something that wasn’t covered, was looking for feedback on the site – or content – before you go into site design.

My 7 years brand management experience tells me, a website development process should be treated like any new product development process. First you develop a concept, you might have a few ideas about what it will look like, but you need to talk to the people who you want to visit your site. We will discuss this a bit more in the next post.

Discussing design, we learn that, you can’t make assumptions about the people who visit your site, especially that they will be approaching from the same angle as you. Using a particular background because of personal taste is a no-no – use all the public research widely available on the web that talk about conventions in web design.  

Accessibility for instance, is a key issue. From the W3C WAI, That means having a Web accessibility encompasses all disabilities that affect access to the Web, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities. The site also discusses how important it is to put this into the planning of the site.

A site highly recommended in the class is the Web Style Guide – a free resource with boundless information – if you are planning on building a website make sure you review it, and I would start with the forward: this book has style…Web Style Guide delivers value and meaning to seemingly disparate audiences, from the student prodigy who would be webmaster to the grizzled veteran information architect who’s been there and organized that. True that.

From this class, I am already clear that simplicity is key, and that I will need to write myself a full web development brief, and am thinking about the rest of the planning recipe… oh, and I reckon to deliver interesting and entertaining content I can’t wait for week 6 to start the process! Gulp!